A Rule Against Murder

In this classic drawing room mystery, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is looking forward to celebrating his wedding anniversary at the remote, luxurious Manoir Bellechasse. As Gamache's holiday becomes a busman's anniversary, he learns that the seemingly peaceful lodge is a place where visitors come to escape their past, until that past catches up with them.

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I read Murder Stone 10 years ago and had forgotten the plot. The re-read was so enjoyable. The background to Gameche's character is all the more rich because we know him from later works. The dysfunctional rich family and the harm that fraudulent investment schemes do to the common man are very timely themes for this decade.

I started Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series recently, and really enjoy her writing. It’s fun to read a series set in Quebec, and her characters are interesting. This is the first book not set in the village of Three Pines. At a remote inn, Gamache meets members of the Finney family, who are cruel to each other and foul to others they meet, yet strangely pathetic at times. A murder occurs, of course. There are also hints of a shameful secret in the Gamache family history. Enjoy!

Fourth in the series and the best so far, possibly because it doesn't take place in claustrophobic Three Pines, but at a remote, claustrophobic resort on a lake during a Quebec summer. A dysfunctional, hateful family, resort folk with secrets, the affable Gamache, a tremendous thunderstorm and presto! a murder in paradise. Penny always portrays the darker aspects of peoples' characters, even "good" people, who (mostly) mask them and somehow manage to rise above them. Perhaps that what makes her books so readable despite the cloying village and its annoying inhabitants.

Louise Penny fans will love this novel and it is a good read but not her finest work and certainly not my favorite to date. The novel does move rather slowly and the motive for the murder may be believable but is also a bit far fetched. The suspects are many in this dis-functional family full of resentment, hostility and animosity. All of the members of this family become suspects with this very unusual method of murder: by a fallen statue. How could this huge statue possibly be pushed over? An unusual way indeed.
The novel also contains the back story about Gamache and how he became the man he is today: kind, strong, thoughtful and intuitive.

Of course wherever Gamache goes, there will be a murder. This time, it's not exactly in Three Pines, but over the mountains a bit. Gamache and Reine Marie go to their favorite auberge to celebrate their anniversary only to find it full of a large family gathering to "celebrate" the patriarch by way of a statue. We knew it could only get worse when it turns out that Peter is a son of the family and Clara is the misfit in-law. Once again, made me very hungry to read about Chef Veronique's meals and I always enjoy reading about Beauvoir's discomfort among the Anglos (all crazy--and this case proves his point) and the 'wilderness' in which he has to work for this case--without a computer for goodness sake! Fun and satisfying.

I like the Inspector and his team and his family. I was sorry, though that we had to go back to the oh so precious Three PInes and its precious inhabitants. The Manoir Bellechasse was a nice change of setting for most of the book.

Take a family of idiots and put them all together in a secluded lodge. A bizarre murder occurs and Gamache goes to work. Do you enjoy being bombarded by constant hostile internecine hatred, this book might be for you. Penny Louise's writing is lovely but cannot overcome the nasty dreariness of the story. I read the whole thing but felt like I was the idiot for doing so.